A few central concerns: Performance Poetry, Mythology, Mixed-Media, Technology, Improvisation
I have been working in mixed media for most of my life, beginning with my work with the innovative group Intersystems in the 60s in Toronto. I was doing performance poetry & tape work at that time and it was in that context that I first met and worked with the electronic music composer John Mills-Cockell who I have continued to work with over the years. It seems to me that the concept of mixed media is not really new or innovative; rather it is as ancient as the first ritual, the first theatre, which certainly utilized all the modalities of sound, action and words. What is new is the alienation of one aspect of human theatre from another thus we just have spoken word or just music or what have you.
When I was growing up, I was introduced to many different, and then new, ideas about communications & contemporary technology by my father, Harley Parker, a painter, museum designer and writer, who was then working with Marshall McLuan at the centre for Culture & Technology in Toronto. I was certainly influenced by these ideas and from the beginning of my own work, I have been keenly interested in the uses of technology in art and the ways it can mold and manipulate consciousness in the context of popular culture. In the sense that we can say that technology is ideology, then it is technology that we must engage with in order to deconstruct that ideology. I take the critique of technology as one of the major agendas of contemporary art. Mass technology always has & always will promote a sort of forgetfullness and the process of unravelling its influence will always involve a re-membering of what has been forgotten. Among that which has been forgotten is that mythology that brings the human body & the animal body into a close matrix of living metaphors. The body as animal confronts the body as machine.
"Sounds like wind blowing in a wheatfield, train rolling down the line, rain coming down on a old tin shed, steel, wire and a rusty heart. Boots of leather and dust and ash. Mollasess and coal and stone. Wedding rings and buried bones of love broken and burnt. Tales and the footprints, ravenswings and souls are earnt"
Open your door – In rushes my love
On a golden sled of a thousand best wishes
Driven forward by the ticking hand
That strikes midnight
With a bang so loud
I lift my strong arms
And proclaim HALLELUJAH!
Thank you most gracious God Of All Time
For entrance into a new year
Of possibility,probability,particularly
Our love shining-on and the warm anticipation of
Your sweet whispered words
In the moonlit chamber of my room,
My eager heart
This night
for a snowy-bright morning-light hour I sit and watch
friendly little sparrows twitch and bump and eat seed
at a feeder just outside the kitchen window
our turkey is cooking, there is no where to go
my mind is on holiday and delights in the simplicity
of small wings small lives that need only a few round kernels
I am focused on contentment and where it is found
today is sweetness just being able
to slow and quiet and appreciate
what I already know
the beauty around me
who calls my name
Good to see you on MySpace. The virtual-cyber friendspace seems like a good fit. Love the photos, and was particularly interested by the complex analytic dynamics fractals -- are you generating these? If so, what program are you using -- Cooool.....
